"What say you, Mrs Star, if these folk were really no bigger than now they seem? What if this country were peopled by a race of little creeping Hop-o'-my-Thumbs?"
"O rare, rare!" I cried, and clapt my hands. "Tell me the history of them, Mr Swift, and their little homely ways and houses like bees' cells for size."
And as I looked up and the words came from him, truly all was visible before me. 'Tis a gift Mr Swift hath had from the beginning, that men should see what he would. And women,--O Father Almighty,--women!
So that was the beginning of Gulliver his travels, that being told for a child's pleasure hath since become a world's wonder. It had not then the meanings he gave it later, nor were there any Yahoos.
If I ask myself when this harmless love did change to a woman's, I cannot tell, because with my growth it grew. But the first pain it brought (and sure pain is love's shadow) was an: 1697, when I was sixteen years of age. For I sat by the housekeeper's window, and Sir William and Mr Swift were pacing the path, their voices coming and going. Mr Swift was now dressed as the young Levite he sometimes called himself since he returned from Ireland a clergyman; and he walked with his eyes fixed moodily on the ground, listening to Sir William.
"Why, as to that, Jonathan," said he familiarly, "I ever thought it behoves a parson to marry when he hath got preferment. There is room for Mrs Parson's help with the women and children of the parish and 't is meet she should set an example with her neat parsonage, and be a notable woman with her possets and cordials for the sick. Now what like is this pretty Varina that Dr Holmes hath brought news of from Belfast?"
"Miss Waring," says Mr Swift, very grave, "is a commendable young lady, but I design not for marriage as yet, Sir, nor for a long time to come."
They past out of hearing and, returning, I heard but the last part of Sir William's words:--
"'T is a cruel thing for a man to raise hopes he means not to be answerable for, and I am told the young lady grows very melancholy upon it. True it is, a man must sow his wild oats even though he honour his cloth; but 't is not well to sow them in a harmless girl's acre, Jonathan. Sow them by the wayside, and then they come not up to her confusion and your own."
"A sound precept, Sir; but better still to sow none. This shall be my care. As to the connection you speak of, 't is long broke off, and was at all times impossible, the lady having no portion, and myself--as you know!"